Discussing political disagreements with parents/relatives?

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Who here has had, or tried to have, conversations with parents or other relatives about one or more disagreements you've had with them on political or social issues?

If so, what are your thoughts on how to make such conversations productive and not harmful to family relationships?

I was inspired to ask this question by the following post here:

To depressedmiddleage:

Have you ever made any attempts to educate your parents about the Israel/Palestine situation? If so, what happened?

I myself did challenge my parents' beliefs on some other social and political issues years ago, with limited success. I'll share some of the details later.

(I will also add that I was born near the end of the baby boom, but I managed eventually to change my mind about the Israel/Palestine situation, in a series of phases, including a long period of confusion when I felt that I just didn't have enough information to take any kind of stand. So please don't generalize about all boomers.)

I have come to conclude that parents tend to be right far more often than their kids. Perhaps your parents are right and you are wrong.

Think about it. Your your parents have far more experience on which to base their opinions.

That depends a great deal on how bubbled they are. I have relatives that get all of their news from Fox News and don't really interact much with people that disagree with that line of reasoning.

That being said, I do think that parents are more likely to have seen a bunch of stuff and have learned a few lessons in terms of historical patterns. Sometimes that's a good thing, and sometimes it leads to stupid things like voting for Biden and expecting to get a Democratic administration. The Democrats haven't been a left party in decades.

I wish I still had parents to question.
Apart from my teen rebellion years, my political leanings swang quickly back in alignment with theirs. My parents were pretty smart and apart from opinions on recreational drug taking and my life choices, they were ALWAYS right. The only time I told my mum to f* off was probably due to her morphine induced paranoia.

Depends on the subject matter, and depends on the life experience of the particular parent.

On purely practical matters, especially on matters that have not changed much over the decades, parents are indeed most likely to be correct, other factors being equal.

On political matters, especially on issues outside the person's direct experience (e.g. foreign policy, for most Americans), a lot depends on how much the person has bothered to research both (or more) sides of the issue. A lot of people, of all age groups, don't bother to do this. Those who do bother are more knowledgeable, regardless of their age.

Decades ago, researching both sides of a political issue, especially an overseas issue, was much harder than it is today. Today it's much easier, thanks to the Internet. On the other hand, today's social media also make it much easier to live in a self-chosen bubble.

Also, even on practical matters, a lot depends on the parent's cultural background and the degree to which an adult child decides to embrace the parent's culture. For example, if the parent belongs to a very strict religious tradition and their child decides to leave that tradition, then the parent might be full of wisdom on how to get along with people of their religious tradition, but some of that wisdom might be irrelevant or counterproductive to getting along with more secular folks.

Similarly, when there are mass cultural changes in either popular or corporate etiquette norms, older people (especially retirees) are likely either to be unaware of the etiquette changes or to have an exaggerated, caricaturish view of them, based on right wing moral panic-mongering about the changes. (This happened a lot back in the 1960's and early 1970's, and I suspect it's probably happening again in today's panic-mongering about "wokeness.")

I tried convincing my dad that Trump lost in 2020. He told me get it in video form so I thought I had a good shot at getting him to believe Trump was the biggest sore loser ever. I produced the video evidence of Trumo admitting to losing election. He still believe Trump won because Trump said it was lost by a hair so obviously my dad thinks the Dems stole it even though Trump admitted to losing,

Trying to disprove things like that often times just doesn't do anything other than reinforcing the belief. Really, the only person that can actually convince those folks tends to be themselves, and it's part of why it's so important to educate people to how to evaluate these things ahead of time.

In all likelihood, the best you can probably do with folks like that is remain nice and teach them how to see the BS in the other side and hope that transfers.

Ya at least I have made some progress with my dad....He thinks that wealth inequality could turn out to be a big problem and that America is basically oligarchy owned by a few billionaires and corporations.

Interesting topic!

My parents are very conservative and hold various beliefs I find problematic, repugnant, or just plain wrong. I tried to have conversations with them when I was younger, but I think I realized over the years that reasoning with them will likely be fruitless, even with utilizing an approach like Street Epistemology. There’s a religious and, thus, a strong emotional component to many of their positions on political and social issues. In order for their stance on them to change, they’d need to adopt a more liberal religious ideology that accepts more divergence and learn how to think critically. It’s kind of a difficult topic for me to address because it’s so complex.

They don’t vote because it’s against their religious beliefs to do so. If they did vote, they would’ve voted for Trump. A while back when I told my mom about Trump’s abuse of women, she said that the women were likely making it up. My dad watches a lot of far right media and agrees with just about any bigotry that’s espoused because it aligns with their religious beliefs. They are homophobic, transphobic, and sexist. A couple years ago, my dad said that Fox News wasn’t biased.

They are firmly pro-Israel in the ongoing conflict, and some of their reasoning appears to be rooted in prejudice. I don’t think I’ll say anything more about that.

They don’t respect my opinion when it diverges from their own, perhaps, in part, because I didn’t stick with their religion. Even if it’s a topic that I’m knowledgeable about or that I studied in college and can cite research on, they just dismiss it. They are into the anti-intellectualism thing and think that higher education isn’t to be trusted or valued. (I’m the first person in my family to go to college.) The other day I heard my mom and her sisters talk about how research can’t be trusted. They weren’t talking about something sensible like validity; it was more like: “If something conflicts in any way with our beliefs, it’s wrong.” It’s very hard reasoning with people who don’t put any stock in research AND who think it’s wrong to “lean on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5-6).

Are they still talking to you about these matters, at all? (Or is the above based on public social media posts of theirs?) Have the JWs loosened up their rule against even talking to family members who leave their faith?

There’s different levels to it.

They still shun people who are disfellowshipped. Very recently, they lightened it slightly. You are now allowed to greet a disfellowshipped person. Before, if you ran into someone at the grocery store or on the street, you weren’t even supposed to say “hi.”

I wasn’t disfellowshipped. I was publicly reproved. They basically announced that I had sinned from the platform of the church, in front of the entire congregation, and said that I was repentant. (A few days prior, I played the part of the repentant sinner in my mock trial led by three elders very well - the quavering voice, the downcast eyes, and the statement that what really hurt was the fact that “I hurt Jehovah.” ) JWs are allowed to talk to me, but we aren’t supposed to be friends. It amounts to soft shunning. When you’re disfellowshipped, you’re hard shunned and real conversations can’t happen. If I hadn’t claimed to be repentant, I would’ve been disfellowshipped. Anyway, I gradually quit going after my humiliating Scarlet Letter moment. My distant family is very rigid. They won’t talk to me, and I’m not invited to family functions. I could be disfellowshipped if it was known that I voted, celebrated holidays with my son, or engaged in apostasy.

My parents and I mostly avoid talking about religion and politics.

My brother hard-shunned me for a year which he apologized for. I never held it against him, though. He was just doing what he felt was right at the time. We’re very close now.

Just for fun, you could pretend that you had seen the light and turned hard conservative.

Make statements such as

"We'll show Putin just how quickly we can take Canada, Greenland and Panama. Imagine, 3 years in Ukraine, and nothing to show for it. What a loser!"

"it is too bad that there aren't any Norwegians who want to move here."

"After we've deported everyone, we can send Blacks to work on the farms."

"We need to round up all of the liberals, and people who voted for Harris, and consign them to interment camps! Put them to work, building the Wall! And our wall will be a Great Wall! Way better than Chyna's! Mexico will pay for it, and we'll be so proud of it, for centuries to come!"

^

My family has friends that are Black, so they totally aren’t racist. I had trouble keeping it together when my mom actually said something along those lines. To be fair, their racism seems to extend more to some groups than others, and in certain cases, it may be more about xenophobia. It’s hard to say. They’ve definitely gotten worse as they’ve gotten older, perhaps because they’re continuously indoctrinating themselves with guano. I suppose that may highlight a macro trend.

I have been lucky in that regard. In my household the 6PM, 7PM, and 11PM TV news was on every day. The news was on in the background during dinner so naturally current events was discussed often. We were always taught that people are different and being yourself is a good thing in most circumstances. At times we vote for different candidates and disagree on issues but the idea of cutting people off over political issues is something that is foreign to us. In fairness we never disagreed on an issue as fundamental such as has Israel been evil from the very beginning.

I am probably not the best person to give advice on this topic but here it goes anyway. Everybody involved has to have the mentality that family is the number one priority. Many of you if not most of you have not had that. Even if you did not get that from your parents it’s still possible to have that with other relatives. Without that what else I advise is going to be much more difficult. Some of you do have relatives that are truly toxic that you do need to cut off.

Obvious is you have separate the person from the opinion. You have to know their triggers, boundaries, the hill they have climbed on etc and this means regular communication. Older people are harder to change, and we often have opinions that will seem dated beyond the pale to you. Younger relatives are going to have opinions that are going to seem bizarre and wrong to you, sometimes to the point of being offensive to you. The last two sentences are normal generational differences. That said you probably have more fundamental things you at least kind of agree on than you think.

Just like you, your opinions are not God’s gift to earth.

It’s going to happen and happen more than once. You or them and both will get this delicate balancing act wrong. The only way to get by these occasions is to realize we are human.

Sometimes I think there’s something to be said for choosing your own family.

In a way we have done that here on WP, haven’t we?